AN: Murder - Within Temptation
I'm so proud. Harrys first plan. Enjoy!
October 31st, 2008
The Temple
Azalel had changed after their elder brothers had told them the secret. He was reckless in his fights now and always angry. Not at Harry, though, like he usually was - he was angry at their minders and the guards and the Other. So, so angry at Father. But his anger only led to punishments and injuries and lost fights, because the younger brothers didn't yet know the secret, have yet to make the promise and were eager to win their fights against their elder siblings.
Harry on the other hand only grew more concentrated and determinded, especially after his first mission. The Other was not as pleased with him as he could have been, but Father had given him rare praises and he had not been punished, so all was good. He grew stronger, too, and won most of his fights. He still watched his brother with worry, taking notice of the crazed glint in his eyes. He had seen many brothers and sisters with the cruel, the cold glint (and rarely he saw hidden warmth that was so hard to keep intact here, but some had it, like Gamora), and he avoided them. He only once saw someone with crazy eyes however - most died before they could possibly reach that state, or died shortly after losing the last bit of sanity they possessed. And now it was forming in Azalels eyes, and Harry didn't know how to make it go away.
And now they were fighting again. Before the secret, they had been an even match whenever they had to face each other. Since then Azalel had lost a lot of matches, however. He reminded Harry of Nebula, who was already a young woman like Gamora and had more metal and wires in her body than actual flesh. He could see all the seams of the plating under the pale, silvery skin of his brother, plating which showed golden on his arms and shins and forehead. His once icy blue eyes were quite electric blue now, unlike Harrys, which had been made to look like his old pair. Where before white, whispy hair had hung down to his shoulders, Azalel was bald now, and his movements were no longer flowing like a living being, but mechanical like his body. It was scary, how little facial expressions he made nowadays. And scary that Harry could see the crazed glint in the first place in such dead, manmade eyes.
Normaly, he would have already won this match. He could see Azalel struggling to keep up, to access and master every new part of him and use it in combat. Every kid had their own limit how many times they could be worked on before they were too overwhelmed by it all. It was like a clock ticking down your time to live. The Temple didn't promote compassion and friendship - Father wanted his children to always compete for the top spots of his favoured, so that only the strong would serve him in the end. To this end, rework was done until the child died on the Altar, in a fight or in a mission - or until the child was strong enough to always win and reach adulthood without visiting the Altar too much. Nebula was one of the only ones that survived despite the heavy work they had put into her body.
And Nebula was the one person Harry didn't want Azalel to look like.
So he had to lose against Azalel. He still looked mostly intact, with most of his enhancements inside his body where they were hard to see. His left side had been worked on the most duo to an organ failure after a vicious fight, and of course his eyes had been replaced , but he could stomache more. Yet Harry hesitated, knowing that after this spar, he was to embark on his second mission (his most important one) and he had to be strong for that. Strong like he was now. He couldn't risk the Altar. Couldn't risk losing and failing afterwards because he was still in pain.
Couldn't betray Azalel with his crazy eyes.
Couldn't betray the Promise.
His eyes met his brothers. Artificial emerald green and fake, electrical blue, just a fraction of a second. It has been so long since he had seen Azalel smile that it threw Harry completely off guard. That was quite enough for his brother to dive in and close the careful gap Harry had maintained to ponder his problem and come to a decision, and enough time to take the decision out of his hands.
The sound of Azalels flesh (and the scraping of metal against metal) under the blade of his knife was just a bit more sickening than the small amount of blood and the flying sparks that erupted from his brothers chest. The image of Azalel on the Altar, screaming and bleeding and connected to far too many cables and tubes, would be the last memory Harry had of him for a long, long time.
November 5th, 2008
Colony "Esa", Moon 3-Beta, Asaol, Outer Ring
A few dozen lightyears closer to the Core from The Keep was Esa, one of the last sponsored Colonys in the Outer Ring. Located on a medium sized moon of the planet Asaol, the Colony held about 13.000 people in one big city and a couple of farms around. Moon 3-Beta (located on the third orbit around Asaol, dwarfed by 3-Alpha, a giant yellowish moon that shares the orbit with 3-Beta) was fertile and tame enough for colonization without depending on costly environmental technology. It had it's own ecosystem already established (a bit barren, but enough for an atmosphere which only needed a bit enrichment), which was the reason for the government on Xandar to spent good money on it despite being so far away. Over the years, however, it proved to be too much of a bother. Patrols lessened until only once every couple of months a ship from Nova Corps would show its presence instead of every couple of weeks, and while long distance communication was nearly instantaneous, Esa itself was not very keen on reporting every little criminal action that happened here, happy with the amount of freedom they had.
That aside, not too much crime was allowed on 3-Beta. Just that it wasn't Nova Corps you had to deal with.
Harrys second mission didn't quite go as well as his first. The Other had been displeased by the small amount of magic Harry had been willing to use, so he gave him a mission quite harder to complete to force the boy into using the still unstable power. More often than not, the boys magic liked to do what it wanted to do whenever Harry failed to concentrate enough. Small things, like letting objects float or change colour, came naturally. Changing one object to another (as he had done in his early years, changing a knife into a flower in his panic during a fight) was still a gamble, however. Pain and fear seemed to help, but even the most timid boy got used to those during their stay in The Temple (if they survived, that is).
So a mission it was. One that brought Harry into a colony that was known for its own quite impressive security system and brutal law enforcement duo to the welcomed distance between Esa and Xandar. The boy had to keep his wits about him for this one - the person he was to kill was Oren Dalmer, a Xandarian and former Nova Corps officer, who now held the position of Chief Deputy within the much harsher police force on Esa.
Milling around in a small park that bordered on the local police station, Harry almost looked like the other preteens on the moon, with sturdy, dark trousers and bright top and the hair cut short until one could see his translator implant under the little scar on his neck and the faint lines behind his ears that would always remind him of his first enhancement whenever he traced them with his fingers. It was a nervous habit of his, to rub over the small lip of fake skin until it flapped up and exposed the port underneath it, used to adjust the implants. He had another set of three ports on his left side, right under the ribcage - he knew they were not only for adjustment, but also to feed his implants new material when he grew. Like all his siblings with major internal redesign, he too had to get measured each quarter so that his implants worked properly. The last three times he had been very attentive to the process.
His eyes flickered back to the reinforced door of the sturdy building, pushing the flap back onto the port and swinging his legs in an idle manner. Other kids played around him - the area right around the various police buildings were deemed the safest to be, so the parents would unload their children in the parks that could often be found there to play and relax a bit. It was not overly full, but the atmosphere felt off to Harry, who was not used to so much laughter and banter. So he tried to ignore the playing kids as good as he was able to and concentrated on the three officers exiting the station. One of them had the marks of a Chief Deputy on them. Shaggy, blond hair, a bit on the bigger side for his race (still a bit smaller than galaxy standart for adult males) with obvious muscles under his cyan uniform. Esas officers wore padded ones, obviously armored, and their weapons on open display, both long range weapons and melee. Chief Deputy Oren Dalmer looked like he knew how to use them, too. With the sound of screams and laughter in his ears, Harry moved from the swing he had seated himself some three hours ago. Only a few adults took notice of the boy who moved through the other children towards the street, but most people took things they assume for granted - like assuming that the boy was walking back to his parents instead following three officers down the street.
November 11th, 2008
Colony "Esa", Moon 3-Beta, Asaol, Outer Ring
Chief Deputy Dalmer was not a very strict man, but with a steady job came a somewhat steady daily routine. He woke up around 6 am and spent an hour with his morning business, grooming and breakfast and walked to the station. Work started 7:30 am, but usually Dalmer was a couple of minutes early for coffee and a smoke with his colleagues to catch a bit of gossip. The morning was filled with desk work unless something really bad happened that needed someone of his rank. He took two little 10 minute breaks before lunch break for a smoke and went to grab something to eat at 1 pm. After lunch, from 2 to 5 pm, he was on patrol with two of his officers, one Palm Rakhel, a palm Aerie who was a couple years older than Dalmer but not ambitious enough to rise in rank, and young Cull-Zher, a Kree who was not sold on the whole racist crap a lot of his kind spouted and who still had to learn the ropes from his two seniors. After patrol, Dalmer was fond of doing some odd desk jobs to prepare for the next day while the night shift took over the station.
Harry had been on Esa for a galactic standart week, and most of his time he had spent with stalking his prey. It was easier at daytime - at night, a child was too conspicious, and he was unable to hide himself with his magic, like he could hide smaller objects. But he was small and trod quietly and managed somehow. It was hard to find set times in which Dalmer was alone on work days, and on his weekly day off that Harry had witnessed, Dalmer had been off with a couple of friends. Both the station and his private home would require Harry to break in, something he had yet to learn properly. He had no interest in attacking the man when he was on patrol either - it was the time he was most heavily armed. His lunchtime, however, showed irregularities.
Dalmer was very fond of a specific restaurant, and his colleagues didn't share this love.
He was currently on his way to the small etablissement just two streets away from the station. Risky, but the best place he had seen yet. It was just open enough to hide, and with the rarity of magic users and the high costs of equiptment to scan for such things, the chances that someone could pinpoint certain supernatural accidents onto one person was close to nil. That was, if one was subtle in his use of magic. Or chose to use magic at all. It was an important decision to make, although if Harry was quite honest with himself, that decision had been made not by him, but by his brother not two weeks ago. He could not possibly bear to see Azalels sanity wasted on an unused opportunity. His brother had lost for him to be properly prepared for this mission, after all.
Dalmer entered the restaurant first. He would need a couple of minutes to get seated and to order his food, and Harry took this time to suck in deep, calming breaths. He didn't enjoy killing people, but after years of training it came easy to him to push the disgust down until he only felt a faint dislike and the wish to find a better option. For the boy however the options were quite limited, and it was simply not worth it to let Dalmer live. Still, it was not like killing the Kree. This was more like killing the poor prisoners of Father, or killing his own siblings. People that had done nothing too terrible and that still died at the hands of equally desperate children. But the times where he couldn't bear the blood on his hands were gone already. It was something to be accepted, because if he didn't, it would drive him mad.
Touching the piece of dead wood in his pocket, he cautiously entered the restaurant. It was nothing fancy, but the menu was somewhat exotic in nature - the people of Esa were a mix of Xandarians and Aeries, with only a few other races living here. Those only on the visit mingled mostly near the port and didn't venture into city proper too often, but this restaurant catered to Aphilix and thus served hearty meals made up of insect protein. It didn't bother Harry, who was used to plain nutrition cubes that tasted like nothing with a sprinkle of ash, but a lot of people were disgusted by that. His target sat at his favourite table close to the windows, a tucked in two-seater with a good view of both the entrance and the door to the kitchens. Harry felt Dalmers eyes on him, but soon the Chief Deputy lost his interest in a single boy who was probably here to sate his curiosity.
Not many people were inside, either way. With his faked huge eyes and wrinkled nose, Harry took his time to gape around, all the while getting a feel for who sat who, before settling onto Dalmer himself. Playing the curious boy was hard to pull off for him, but he did well enough for the uninterested crowd. Father had his reasons why he trained his children from a young age. People tended to trust kids more than adults. Especially when said kids would show up unarmed on most radars - wood was good like that, fooling the tech that was searching for metals and plastic.
"Excuse me, sir?" His voice was a bit rough from the lack of talking, but he didn't worry. Dalmer was calm when he regarded Harry once again, this time with a tad more interest than before. There was a hint of annoyance, but he didn't send him away when he approached the lone table at the windows. People mingled on the street and Harry felt on display. He knew this was risky. Knew that the Other was watching him, now that he had approached the target. The Other had made it clear that Harry was to use his magic with this kill - preferably without being noticed. He could feel the dead wood heavy in his pockets - he had strengthened the material over the last couple of days, whenever he had sat down to wait for the Chief Deputy, and it was now hard as good steel, and wickedly sharp right at the point.
"How can I help you?" The words sounded friendly enough, but again Harry sensed some annoyance from the man. Not enough that the man wouldn't talk to him for a few minutes. His eyes were fixed on Dalmers, willing the Other to see.
"Oh, I just saw that you were an officer, sir. My mom said that without you Esa would be a really bad place, and she said I should become an officer. Was it very hard?" He put some of his growing worry into his voice and was rewarded with a small smile on the blonde mans face.
"Well, see here..." Chief Deputy Oren Dalmer saw the makeshift knife coming, but he was too close to stop the pointed end to enter his soft flesh of his throat. He had leant closer to inspect the future officer in front of him, maybe to part with some patronising words of working hard and doing good in school. Maybe he was more realistic and would actually tell the truth - that only hard people survived this job on this outskirt colony, far away from proper law. It sounded more like him, and Harry took this thought and put it into his precious corner in his mind. Dalmer earned to be remembered, if only for the fact that his death had helped Harry.
When the flailing body hit the floor, throat a bloody, gurgling mess, he fled from the scene. He had little hope to escape law enforcement for too long - this time, the waiting shuttle would not approach until it was safe to do so to pick Harry up, and in a colony this small it was easy to find a murderer, especially with witnesses. The piece of wood was left in the restaurant. In the end, it took only a couple of hours for the police to find him and take him away into the cells. Harry made sure to run and hide till the end, however, with eyes wide open for the Other to see.
He didn't allow himself to smile until after the officers left him alone in his little cell. He knew that there would be pain waiting for him, but he was used to that. He also knew that Esas law enforcement was known for their harsh punishments - he had made sure to read the laws and listen to the street for what really happened behind closed doors.
And he knew the most important detail: That for the murder of an officer, a Chief Deputy no less, the criminal would be send to the higher court to receive their penalty. A court far closer to the core region of the galaxy. And far enough away from The Temple to initiate the second part of the plan he made more than a year ago, in a hidden part of The Temple, when he first heard of the secret. Maybe he wasn't so bad at planning after all.
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